Star Trek Review

I’m not a Trekkie (or, excuse me, a Trekker) by any stretch of the imagination.

Of course, being the pop culture nerd that I am, I’m not completely clueless to all things "Star Trek". I know who all main characters are, and I’ve certainly seen more than a few episodes of both The Original Series and The Next Generation. Then again, that’s as far as I go. I never got into Deep Space Nine or Voyager, and I couldn’t tell you what the "pon farr" ritual was without Wikipedia’s help. (I’ll pause for about 40 seconds to give my fellow non-Trekkie/ers enough time to look it up. You know you want to.)

(And we’re back.)

The reason I bring this up is because I suspect that I’m the target audience for the new "Star Trek" movie directed by J.J. Abrams, who has admitted that he’s not exactly a devout Trekkie/er. However, I think the fact that Abrams is NOT slavishly devoted to the franchise ends up being one of the movie’s greatest strengths.

Don’t get me wrong - things aren’t COMPLETELY different! All the names are the same, and the actors mostly look their parts. After a thrilling and effective opening sequence showing us the birth of James T. Kirk (Chris Pine), the movie follows his time at the Starfleet Academy, where he crosses paths with Spock (Zachary Quinto), Uhura (Zoe Saldana), Bones McCoy (Karl Urban), a green chick and other familiar faces, before embarking on his first mission - stopping Romulan bad guy Nero (Eric Bana), who is going around destroying planets on his scary-looking ship. After that - well I won’t tell you anymore about the twisty plot in case you haven’t seen it yet.

Pine probably has the toughest job in the cast, trying to live up to Shatner’s iconic portrayal of Kirk. Wisely, Pine doesn’t attempt to do a Shatner impersonation. Instead, he plays up Kirk’s roguish, rule-breaking, hell-raising side, and he pulls it off with plenty of charisma. Since he’s the lead, I would’ve liked to have seen more depth in the character. Pine’s performance hinted that he’s able to convey that depth - too bad the movie didn’t give him a great chance to show it.

Then again, maybe screenwriters Robero Orci and Alex Kurtzman simply decided to give Spock most of the heavy stuff. Thankfully, Quinto is up to the task. He gives a great performance as Spock. He already looks eerily similar to Leonard Nimoy - his predecessor in the role - so pulling off the logical Vulcan side didn’t seem like too much of a stretch. Where he really succeeds (and where he really ropes us in) is in communicating the conflict his half-human nature presents.

In fact, Kirk and Spock butt heads in the movie so spectacularly that they kind of render the actual villain in the story kind of useless. Eric Bana is a good actor, but he’s not given much to do as Nero other than look angry and vow revenge.

The rest of the Enterprise crew is a little underdeveloped, which is to be expected from an origin story. That being said, I really liked Urban as Bones (just dead-on), and the rest of the crew got their own brief moments to shine. I liked that John Cho got to kick some ass as Zulu. On the other hand, Zoe Saldana is little more than eye candy so far as the competent Uhura, Simon Pegg overdid his comic relief shtick as Scotty, and I still haven’t decided whether Anton Yelchin’s performance was Chekov was intentionally funny. (I’m leaning toward yes.)

The real triumph of Abrams’ movie - other than the great special effects, and the cool action sequence on top of the Romulan drill - is that, through the movie’s storyline, he found an ingenious way of re-introducing these very familiar characters for a new generation (and maybe even for old fans who might be interested in a different take on the "Trek" universe). I can understand some of these older fans being annoyed that Abrams has given himself license to change some of their beloved characters and storylines. However, I would say to these people that the stories they love are still right where they’ve always been, and ready to be revisited any time. I love that Abrams is doing his own thing. (By contrast, slavish devotion to source material ended up holding back the recent "Watchmen" movie, in my opinion.)

Besides, that I think there are plenty of signs of respect for the original series. I liked hearing the younger actors say things like, "I’m giving her all she’s got, Captain!" and "Damn it Jim, I’m a doctor not a _____." I also loved the fact that a random guy who gets killed was wearing red. Curiously, I thought most of the scenes featuring Nimoy as the original Spock were too cutesy by half.

In the end, the question I ask myself is, "What would be the point in redoing 'Star Trek' with these characters if everything was going to turn out the way it did before?" I like that I don’t know where Abrams and his team are going to take these characters. I’m certainly looking forward to finding out.

Star Trek...A-